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Ahead of the annual Google I/O developer festival opening its doors on Tuesday, Google has already made one major announcement: it will soon start deleting your data automatically.

Writing in the official Google safety and security blog, David Monsees and Marlo McGriff, the product managers for Google search and maps respectively, say that the company is responding to user feedback asking to make managing data privacy and security simpler. "You can already use your Google Account to access simple on/off controls for Location History and Web & App Activity," they say, "and if you choose, to delete all or part of that data manually." What's new is the soon to be rolled out "auto-delete controls" that will enable users to set time limits on how long Google can save your data.

Said to be arriving within weeks, the new controls will apply to location history as well as web and app activity data to start with. Users will be able to choose a time limit of between three and 18 months after which the data concerned will automatically delete on a rolling basis. You can already delete this data manually if you want, but the ability to have it deleted automatically is long overdue in my never humble opinion. Especially given reports last year that suggested Google was storing location data even when users had turned off location history and considering the somewhat arduous manual deletion process.

Not that everyone will want to delete this data of course. As with most things online these days it comes down to a choice between privacy and function. Actually, make that a balance between the two as it's rare for anyone to be totally binary when it comes to such matters truth be told. Google says that this data "can make Google products more useful for you, like recommending a restaurant that you might enjoy, or helping you pick up where you left off on a previous search." If you are of the don't store any of my location data thank you very much persuasion, then disabling location history altogether would seem like a better option given that some mobile apps can track location data when they aren't running. For everyone else, the new auto-deletion controls will be a welcome weapon in the "taking back control of at least some of your data" arsenal.

Keep checking the Data & Personalization section of your Google account settings, specifically the "Manage your activity controls" option I would imagine, to see if the function has rolled out for you in the coming weeks.

I'm a three-decade veteran technology journalist and have been a contributing editor at PC Pro magazine since the first issue in 1994. A three-time winner of the BT

…

I'm a three-decade veteran technology journalist and have been a contributing editor at PC Pro magazine since the first issue in 1994. A three-time winner of the BT Security Journalist of the Year award (2006, 2008, 2010) I was also fortunate enough to be named BT Technology Journalist of the Year in 1996 for a forward-looking feature in PC Pro called 'Threats to the Internet.' In 2011 I was honored with the Enigma Award for a lifetime contribution to IT security journalism. Contact me in confidence at davey@happygeek.com if you have a story to reveal or research to share.